 Well, our next panel is re-inventing national security in the era of COVID-19 and we have two amazing panelists who just to help us think through that. Under-secretary Flournoy is of course a former Under-secretary of Defense for Policy. She was also the manager, strategy partner and founder of Sexy Advisors. She's also the former CEO of CNAS and we also have General Joseph Fentow who ran Central Command before the operations command and now is the CEO of Business Executives for National Security. So, let me start with this sort of broad question for both of you, which is almost 200,000 Americans have died, which is more than the combined total of Americans who died in every war, Korean war. We had a million people die and die around the world. Obviously, we're sort of in the second or third innings of a fairly long game here. What do we need to think? How do we need to re-conceptualize national security, both in terms of maybe the conceptualization, but also money, because at the end of the day money is what drives it. Where you put your money is where you put your bets in a settlement somewhere we have 700 billion dollar plus defense budget versus CDC getting kind of budget cuts. Do we need to kind of rethink about how we're defining the security and how we're spending money on it? Michelle? Thanks, Peter, and thanks for enjoying this conversation. You know, I think it's impossible to imagine that after a pandemic like this with nearly 200,000 Americans dying from this, we wouldn't have a broader notion of national security. I would include our preparedness to deal with transnational threats, not just nations' state threats like a rising China or a Hustle of Russia or and North Korea pursuing nuclear weapons, but transnational threats like pandemics, like climate change, like non-proliferation. And I think if you take that broader definition of national security, you do have to look at a wider view. And it raises the question of whether we need to repeal that tool box a lot. I mean, usually I defend my whole current defense bullish on having a strong military capable of deterring and preventing conflict, but I also want to really have a statement to leave you as a health diplomat and a really robust, I think that's the idea, that can go now to humanitarian development and really other civilian instruments. I think in the wake of the pandemic that should also include public health instruments and our support for the WPF and our ability to take more of the bigger problems that we have this time in really leading the world and the coalition said not like-minded states in pandemic response, making sure we do better much, much, much better next week. General Votel. Yeah, thanks. Peter, it's great to be with you and Michelle. So, you know, as Michelle mentioned here, you know, I think first and foremost from a national security standpoint, this is exposed to our own vulnerabilities that have to be addressed, whether it's our supply chain vulnerabilities or bodies to have to produce and stockpile the rising materials to have on hand or whether it's our Kuberoff's response mechanism that we have for national emergencies. And again, I think everyone can appreciate that the pandemic, this national emergency, is different than a hurricane, it's different than an earthquake, it's different than something that's localized. This one is sustained and it is affecting all of us, so we need to make sure that we have a response architecture in place to address that. And that's kind of on the internal standpoint. You know, looking externally, I think COVID and the pandemic adds another layer of environmental complexity to the areas in which we operate. It's going to be a persistent factor. I mean, I think we've already heard service chiefs and others talk about this aspect, the fact that they will have to continue to operate in an environment that is characterized by a persistent virus. So it's going to have some impacts on us and how we operate with our partners. There's no doubt there's financial impact to this. And to address some of the internal things and addressing our preparedness there, we're going to have to make investments in that particular area. And that will have to come with some offsets, I would imagine. And that may include the Department of Defense. I certainly hope that any of those decisions we made very carefully and deliberately with looking at the future impacts. But I do think this does change our environment, our security environment for those reasons and the fact that it's exacerbated our relationship with China at an important juncture. So I think there's no doubt that we're going to have to re-conceptualize how we look at national security in this environment. Later to that, we're in a kind of unusual era of civil-military relations where you, General Votel, for instance, have publicly criticized the President for withdrawing troops from Syria. You've also made some sort of more general statements about kind of upholding the Constitution. And obviously, you're not alone. A lot of three-star and four-star retired and even some of the active duty have made statements that are either directly criticized by the President or at least obliquely say that he's getting something wrong. So I mean, it's not a law. It's a policy that the senior military retires or should sort of stay out of politics. Are we creating some kind of bad precedence, in a sense, or is the time that we're in necessarily that you have to make these kinds of statements? I want to say you. I mean, I'm talking about there are dozens of retired three-stars and four-stars that have made various kinds of statements in the recent years. Well, yeah, I think there's a very fair and good question. First off, I don't think there's a rupture in civilian-military relationships. I do think that the current environment of polarity, the lack of belief and understanding and support for the institutions which have undergirded our democracy for a long time, have perhaps brought this to the forefront and put it in some level of tension. But I don't think there's a rupture in place. And I certainly have written on topics that I thought were important to me. I think everybody has to engage for their own purposes. And I won't try to divine the reasons why everybody did. I know why I did. It was principally because I thought I could play a role in informing, educating and helping with the understanding on complex topics and why we ought to have some public discourse about some of these things and trying to inform the whole public. And I try to do that in a way that doesn't personally attack anybody, tries not to make it harder for people in uniform, doesn't critique those who are charged with carrying out the missions on the ground, for which I no longer have responsibility. So I do think there's a role. I think it has to be very deliberate. I think you have to have your own rules in place for how you do it. Secretary, how do you come down on that? If it's a Biden administration or either now or Kamala Harris administration down the road and offices come out in some way publicly critiquing the acts of that administration, hasn't the kind of precedent set in perhaps a way that Democrats might like in some future where retired are critiquing what that administration is doing? Well, I start from the premise that it's very important to have a military that is a large political institution. And so I don't think that there's been a rupture, but I do think the relationship is not in a healthy place and it needs to be reset based on first principles. I think we've had a president who has tried to be more political than he's used in the military, whether in using the military in a sort of law enforcement role in Lockheed Park and in ways that they felt were potentially violating First Amendment rights, constitutional rights of Americans who were protesting and lining up military officers, generally general officers, for photo ops, for political purposes, intervening in the military justice system to overturn pullings and convictions for his political purposes. I mean, so there's there's a lot of fraying of the fabric here that I think does need to be repaired. But I think you have to go back to first principles. You know, I think that every I can't speak as a military officer, but I have many colleagues and friends who've been in this position where they really do believe in the apolitical nature of the institution and the importance of that. And yet there for every individual there may become a time where they feel morally compelled to speak up because they are so concerned about the actions being taken. And I think it's a very, very individual choice. My view is, you know, we need to keep the military a political, but we also need a leadership climate where people who have the basis for offering really important dissent have a chance to, you know, hopefully internally internal to the government, you know, an environment where dissent is heard, it's valued, it's respected, and it's taken into account and decision making. When you close that off, you're going to get a lot more squirting out into the public domain in other ways when people feel they morally have to speak up and they're not being heard internally. General Votel, you would criticize the withdrawals from Syria. Obviously, the president has announced a fairly substantial drawdown from, there was around 14,000 down to 4,000 in Afghanistan with similar draws in Iraq. I mean, are these drawdowns one place and are they somewhat reminiscent, Secretary Flournoy, of decisions that the Obama administration made at the end of the second term towards the end of the second term of the Obama administration in Afghanistan and the end of 2011 during the Obama administration in Iraq? So maybe start with you, General Votel, and then Secretary Flournoy. Sure. So, you know, I think what you've heard over a long period of time, certainly, you know, I mentioned this when I was in uniform, serving that, you know, reductions in force and change in force posture and locations ought to be ought to be driven by the conditions on the ground and those conditions that are contributing to the strategic objectives that that that we are trying to achieve. And so, you know, whether these are wise at this particular time, I'm not sure I can make the decision on that because I'm not the guy that is looking at the specific conditions on the ground that inform that, but I think it is vitally important that we understand that in the situation of Afghanistan here, where we're now engaged in negotiations between the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan, I think presence and capability by United States forces on the ground is an important aspect to back it up and to support that. Looking at Iraq, I mean, the majority of the campaign to certainly deliberate the caliphate has been complete. And we're continuing to work with our Iraqi partners in addressing the remnant threats of ISIS that remain in the area. And again, I think we have to always look at what the force posture is and what's needed to do that. But it has to be driven by the conditions that are trying to be created to support the objectives that we have on the ground. So that will be the determination of whether we have made a wise choice or not. And in this particular area, I think we've seen, we've seen indications in the past that when we would draw quickly, when we draw completely without a plan to sustain things, then we have a tendency to run into problems. So we have to be very, very deliberate. Michelle. Yes, I would just add, I agree that I think where you get into trouble is precipitous unilateral withdrawals without consultation, without assessment of the associated risks and some risk mitigation planning. I think that's what we saw in Syria and that's why you got such a strong response from people, especially because when you have allies that are literally fighting and dying alongside you in the battlefield, surprising, kind of dumping them without notice, without consultation, without a plan is not only something that's very damaging to that alliance, but it's damaging to every alliance. It makes every ally who relies on the United States question whether they can rely on the United States. And that's really potentially very damaging to our credibility. I think in Iraq, at this point, again, I'm like General Votel, I'm out of government, I haven't seen the analysis, but it seems to me that if we're consulting closely with our Iraqi partners and the coalition, that it's possible to manage some degree of drawdown while supporting the security assistance and cooperation mission of continuing to advise, assist, train, equip the Iraqi forces there. And that seems like a reasonable effort to me. On the Afghan side, I think that we have a similar goal in mind to transition to a security cooperation assistance kind of model, but there I think we're at a more delicate moment. General Votel noted the negotiations. This is the first time there's really been a sit-down between the Taliban and the Afghan government and broader Afghan society. We need to make sure to support this and give it a chance to work. And I think if the US were to withdraw unilaterally or precipitously, we could actually undercut the negotiations and particularly the leverage of the Afghan government and Afghan civil society at the table. So I think we have to be very careful. We have to be conditions-based and we have to be mindful of how our troop posture interplays with the dynamics and potential success of the negotiations. Well, on the negotiations, I mean, to both of you starting with General Votel, of course, had responsibility as a command of the Central Command for Afghanistan. You know, how much faith do you put in the Taliban's kind of the view that they will disassociate themselves with terrorist organizations at which they're supposed to lead 20 in the AKPAC region, but they really will have a different policy on women that they really have a plan other than just simply to take over as much of the country as possible. Do you think that, and is there other splits that exist between the people negotiating in Doha and people on the ground that ultimately those splits may, you know, kind of really impact any kind of potential deal? Well, yeah, I mean, I don't have to hold any illusions that this is going to be an easy process and there won't be some backtracking there won't be disappointments along the way. I mean, I think this whole process that we've watched play out really for the last several years now, since President Trump announced his strategy and his focus on bringing this to reconciliation in the Taliban and the government of Afghanistan. And so we've seen how hard this has been to get to this particular point. And but but we're here and along the way that has taken discussions and has taken some level of accommodation on both sides to get to this particular point, you know, with regard to the Taliban, I mean, you know, there's, you know, they have not always been trustworthy in terms of the things that they have done. And we've seen them, we have seen them use their own military capability to ratchet up pressure on the Afghan government when things weren't going well in the in the, you know, in the pre discussions of this. So, you know, I expected some level of that will will continue throughout this, this is going to continue to be a very, very hard process as as we work through this, but they're they're they're at the table and and they're and they're now talking and this is this is a move in the right direction. And as Michelle said, this is this is why it is so important at this point for us to stay engaged in this process. This has been the object of what we've been what we've been focused on for the last couple years. Now we need to to to stay with it and and help help shepherd it along with our allies to the through the through the process is difficult. It is going to is it is going to be and we need to be prepared to respond to pressure with pressure on this and we do that by maintaining capabilities and our own forces on the ground, I think. Yeah, I would just add I think I think both sides have realized that they cannot fully achieve their objectives on the battlefield. And I think that's one of the primary reasons why they're both at the table. I think both understand that if the talks break down, the most likely and and if they they lost the support of the international community that's sort of condemning themselves in their country to years more of civil war. So I think even the Taliban understands that the only way Afghanistan goes forward is with the support of the international community is including investment and development support. And so, you know, that argues for some kind of compromise. Now, you know, whether whether they can get there, I don't know my own view is if you look at historical cases, you got to give this some time. This is really complex. This is not going to happen in a week or maybe even a year. And I just hope that the international community has a staying power is to to hang in there to use the leverage we have as general mentioned, but to to not get frustrated in a month's time and say forget it, we're done because then I think we would make, you know, it would be an unfortunate set of decisions and outcomes that follow from that. Secretary Fulner, when historians write the history of the Trump sort of national security foreign policy, will they say that 20 largely go off the kind of China threat? They kind of stooped it appropriately, even if the tactics weren't always correct? I think there's actually now a fair amount of bipartisan consensus on the nature of challenge with China that this is a multi-dimensional competition, economic, logical, security, even ideological or political. So, I think there's more consensus about the nature of the problem than there is about the strategy that's been used to handle it. I think the critique of the Trump administration will be it's been too tactical, hasn't really had a strategy, it's been very transactional and very focused, particularly on trade and tariffs and that line of action. More recently, it started to focus on the whole question of technology competition and potential for decoupling, but there really hasn't been a broader strategy. This is the first administration that hasn't had a strategic dialogue with China ever since Nixon. We've had a strategic dialogue that dealt with everything from security issues to economic issues to, frankly, areas of cooperation. There is a cooperative agenda that needs to be worked with China, whether it's pandemics or climate, nonproliferation, North Korea. So, this is a relationship that has to be, you have to both deal with the fundamental competition, but also try to prevent that from becoming conflict, as you also try to work on cooperative areas. That's a very nuanced approach that has to require some pretty strategic thinking, and I think that's been lacking. The other thing I'll note is, in my experience, the best way to influence Chinese behavior is with BIOISM for more allies. When we show up as 20 like-minded states to push back on some bad Chinese behavior, whether it's in South Tennessee or in the trade era, we tend to get results. When the U.S. doesn't, you know, laterally, we're much less likely to be affected. So, I think there's a missing piece of really working the allied dimension of approach going forward. Well, just a quick example on that. The Trans-Pacific Partnership was something that the Trump administration pulled out five days into the administration, and it seemingly because Trump may have personally misunderstood what it was supposed to do. So, in a Biden administration, would that be revived? I can't speak for a Biden administration, but I do think that I agree it was a mistake not to sign on to the treaty framework. We work so hard to negotiate that it created the percent perception of the U.S. isn't fitting to Asia. We're not really going to fail in the way that our allies and partners hopefully would. I do hope in a new administration that there will be consideration given to is that a framework the U.S. could join? Is there a way to build on that framework and couple it with some investment in recalibration of our own workforce and economy as we try to rebuild that, you know, to actually get us to the point where we could be part of that framework? I think that would be not only in our economic issues, interests, but also in our strategic interests. We've seen now this rapprochement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and countries you know well from your military experience. I mean, is this a big deal, a small deal, a medium deal? Obviously, Egypt and Israel fought two pretty powerful wars when they made peace between Ahmad Sadat and Jimmy Carter and Bagan. Where would you school this? Driver for change in the region. I think it is important. Maybe it's somewhere between medium and really high in terms of these countries that were in conflict. But they were, I think, the idea of Israel and Arab countries normalizing relationships, I think, is an opportunity for the region. And regardless of whether they've had some level of contact going on for a number of years, to do it public, I think, provides us a good opportunity and certainly provides a good optic for more stability in the region, which I think is an important aspect for those that have spent a lot of time in the region. We've seen the benefit of a relationship between Israel and Jordan, between Israel and Egypt. That has helped stabilize things. It has made things better in the region. And so I think there's some hope for this. I think the challenge in and of itself, I think it's an achievement. But I think the more important aspect is how do we now use this to relook at what our strategy for the region is, vis-a-vis the pressure campaign on Iran, and then, of course, the long-term peace plan for the Palestinians. I think we have to look at how this can potentially contribute to moving forward on objectives in the region. And so that, to me, will be the real opportunity here is if we can leverage this to move forward in a more strategic manner on the broader issues of the region that are of some concern to us and to people in the region and others around the world. Switching gears a little bit, Secretary Flulano, I have a question I will not ask General Fertile directly. How would you assess President Trump as commander-in-chief? Frankly, I do not think that he has the attributes necessary for Trump. In able to work in a couple of different administrations and observe others from the outside, I think a commander-in-chief has, first and foremost, an appreciation for the Constitution and the division of labor in our divided government and his authorities versus those of Congress and others. He has an appreciation for the importance of keeping the military out of politics and not misusing them as a political tool. He has an appreciation for the weight of the decisions that should be, you know, when decisions sending Americans sons and daughters into harm's way are made, the weight of those decisions, the need to listen, the need to really grapple with the material, to understand the risks, to ask yourself, would I be willing to send my own son or daughter, and if not, then what business do I have sending someone else's? You know, the willingness to hear dissent, to make sure that you really take, look at things from all different angles and you can use that dissent, even if you don't agree with it, to be more aware of the risks and have an opportunity to mitigate some of those risks. So, temperamentally, intellectually, and just in the way that he has operated, he's a very transactional tactical leader who I don't, I think the probably one of his weakest areas of job performance has been in the Commander-in-Chief role. And for me, this should be a litmus test for Americans when they go to the polls. You've got to have someone that you believe that first and first dog number one is protecting the security of this country, and we are in a very challenging period. So, I would hope, I hope that's high on everybody's list as they evaluate each other's. Move a little bit to some of the questions that are coming. General Votel, did you have something you wanted to say? No, no, I'm good. So, a question from a leading Pakistani journalist, MTA School, which is a good question and we're also relate to something that General Votel has mentioned, which is, let's say President Trump does lose the election, what happens to the Taliban peace process and related to the Iran agreement and pressure campaign that General Votel mentioned, I mean, part of, you know, the nature of our business, of our electoral processes that you can have these changes every four years. And unless you have kind of ratified by the Senate treaties, things can change, whether it's the Paris climate agreement or the Iran nuclear agreement. And, you know, that puts our allies and our enemies, I think, and it's hard to predict what we're going to do. And, you know, not through anybody's particular fault, but this is the nature of the system. So, starting with the Taliban peace agreement, I mean, obviously, neither of you were involved in those negotiations right now, but any thoughts about, you know, what a future, if other administrations will continue this as a kind of bipartisan consensus around these negotiations? I'll start with you, Secretary Flournoy. Yeah, my sense is that there is a very good degree, solid degree of bipartisan consensus, supporting, giving this a try, you know, giving the negotiations a chance to be successful. You know, we are out of good options here. And this has been a very long and costly and painful war. So, I think you find, you know, again, I can't speak for a future administration, but I would be surprised if there was a whole hearted support for the negotiations. And frankly, maybe even a doubling down in terms of putting more U.S. diplomatic effort and capital into trying to move them forward, to bring the region together, to support the negotiations, to reduce the risk of spoiler activity on the margins. So, I can't imagine, you know, either administration walking from it. Well, I can't imagine a new administration walking away from it. I do worry that President Trump, you know, he's made it very clear that he wants to bring troops home from a lot of places. I do worry that he'll wake up one morning and say, I'm done with it. We're coming home. Dan, the consequences. I would just add from my perspective, and I'm a military person, I think there is an importance in some continuity in our strategic approaches. I mean, you look at the Cold War, for example. I mean, how many administrations that took place over the course, and we were able to, while we've changed some tactics along the way, strategically, we stayed pretty predictable in terms of that. And I think the strategic predictability is a benefit for us, particularly with our allies and partners who are joining us in these things. And so, you know, some of the tactics and other things certainly should change. And I'm not saying there shouldn't be changes in strategy, but I think they do have to be considered. I think we have to look at the impacts of that. I would be very hopeful that we would kind of continue to stay the course, now that we've put all the work into getting the Taliban and the Government of Afghanistan to the table. Question from Steven Shapiro, which is, you know, what is the role, the proper role, for the intelligence agencies? The question in our office mentions that the DIA general actually apparently sort of predicted some of the COVID issues early on or said that there would be, you know, large-scale consequences. So, what is the proper role of the intelligence community in providing strategic warning about pandemics, starting with you, Secretary Flournoyne? I think the intelligence community has a very key role to play. But I think the primary warning has to come from our public health infrastructure and experts. And I think, you know, in comparing notes in organizations like the WHO, I mean, I would be the first person to say that the World Health Organization needs some strengthening and reform. But the way to get that to that outcome is not to abandon it in the middle of a pandemic, but to reinvest in it, to get it to a better level of performance. I think the U.S. missed an opportunity to play a leadership role, whether it was leveraging the WHO or the G20 or so forth, to coordinate a much more coherent early response that might have made a difference in terms of saving lives around the world and certainly saving lives here at home. So, I do think the intelligence community has a role to play. But I also think that has to be paired with the public health warning system, which is really kind of the frontline of defense. General Vosel, any thoughts? Yeah, so I know I agree with Michelle. I think that's exactly right. I think the intelligence community can play a very strong supporting role for all members of the interagency here and providing them the necessary background information and other things that they need to make judgments and turn that into information for the public to understand what is happening. I don't think the intelligence community can do a better job of warning in terms of this, but I do think they have a role to play in supporting the broader agency on issues like this. To both of you, General Vosel of Life, U.S. military and Secretary of Foreign working at the Pentagon and your families volunteered to be part of the U.S. military. The U.S. military's by and large is a pretty well degraded organization and historically has been a kind of integrating factor in American life. But at the three- or four-star level, it's so overwhelmingly white and male. Let me start with you, Secretary of Foreign Illinois. How do you kind of change that? That's not obviously something that you're changing at night, but how do you change the culture, make it easier for people of color to get up into the three or four-star ranks? Well, I do think, I think you need to really assess the entire pipeline from initial recruiting and accession through, you know, selecting your specialty through promotion path, through all the way on on up. I think while the military has gotten better in the recruiting of a more diverse force, as you said, as you, as people get promoted up into higher, higher echelons, that diversity tends to diminish. Some of that is, is a culture, cultures where people of color get sort of encouraged to route into certain specialties that may not be combat arms, that may not be just competitive when it comes to promotion. Some of it may be internal bias. You know, right now when you get a promotion folder, there's a photo of the person and whether you're conscious or not. You know, we're all guilty sometimes of the mini-made culture of, you know, does that person remind me of myself and therefore I would want to support them. So there's just, I think you really have to assess this current systems soup to mess and then really sustain leadership focus, changing, you know, removing the obstacles and keeping leadership attention on this. It needs, you know, the creation of an inclusive culture, a diverse team and an inclusive culture needs to be at the very top of our leadership criteria for evaluation criteria. If you have leaders who are not doing that, that's a problem and that should factor into their promotion. And I would include in this the whole question of the unequal treatment of people by gender or sexual assault and harassment problem. This is a leadership issue first and foremost. It's a culture issue. But my hope is that at this moment in time, the department will finally really do kind of an intense assessment of all of the challenges and roadblocks and really make a concerted effort to go after these variables. That could be transformative, not only to the collection of culture to look like the population it serves, but also to the performance. We all know that the more diverse a team is, the better the organization perform performs. Harvard Business for you has countless articles documenting this in terms of company bottom line. So this is something that we need to do because it's but also because we'll have a better military position. General Votel, you commanded four, two four-star commands. What are your thoughts on this? Well, I think Michelle has hit on the key points here just to reinforce that. You know, if you look at it, I'll speak about the service that I came from the Army. You know, by the time an officer is selected for Brigadier General, they have served anywhere from 24 to 26 years. So that right there highlights the importance of being in the process early and having a development process and a talent management process that ensures that we are addressing all of the diversity aspects that we require in our leadership and our military forces. And then you just think about a three or four-star back to your question. Now you're talking 30 to 34 years. So it has to start early. I'm really proud of the things that the Army has started to do. I'm not meaning to besmirch other services. I'm sure they're doing other things. I know the most about that. But there's been a very deliberate effort to try to get into the process early and start developing, developing women, developing people of color to give them greater opportunities. You know, the decision made back in 2016 to open up all specialties, all combat specialties to women was an important step in moving towards this. But it's going to take time. When you think that it takes about 16 years to produce a battalion commander, that means around 2030-2032, you will see, you will hopefully see females that will be in positions where they will be battalion commanders in combat organization. So it takes time. We have to have to dedicate it to it. What I can tell you is this, from my own experience, five years as a four-star officer and having had the opportunity to sit in many of the discussions that we had with the Army leadership here on this, is this topic is first and foremost a thing we're talking about. The diversity aspect of it and making sure whether it's gender or color or whatever it happens to be, making sure that that was a part of the discussion as we looked at growing the ship of the service. This is important and it's got to start early and it's got to be consistent across this. And you've got to have leaders that support this the whole way. And that's absolutely essential to it. Okay, one other question from the audience and this I think will probably be our final question. Is it best to modernize traditional weaponry or to focus on developing new technology in the coming years? And how do we spark innovation that isn't commercially available to our adversaries? Maybe start with Secretary Flournoy. So I actually think the answer is hybrid of the two choices meaning no matter what we do we will likely end up with a baseline force that is comprised of a lot of legacy systems that will have already been purchased or being purchased and will last for 30, 40 years. The name of the game is the deciding, finding those cutting edge often commercially developed, sometimes developed by the defense primes, but finding ways to take the new cutting edge capabilities whether they're AI enabled, whether they're unmanned systems that can be teamed with human decision makers, whether it's new secure kinds of networks, C4SR networks that can operate even in a very contested environment, whether it's hypersonic, you know all these different kinds of things. The question is how do you integrate those kinds of capabilities at scale with the force that you're going to have and not just by the by the stuff, but allow those new capabilities to change how you actually deter and fight to change your concepts of operations to change to give you new advantages over your competitors. To me it's really bringing those things together and the hard choices are the trade-offs between investing in greater numbers of legacy systems versus taking some of that money to accelerate the development and adoption of these fewer capabilities at scale, but it's really the marriage of the two together and the development of new operations that's going to give us the edge in the future. I would agree with Michelle that I think this probably is going to be a hybrid approach, but the thing I would emphasize to you from my experience and what I've seen in terms of innovation is the closer we can get the users and the employers of capabilities we're building to those that are developing the better we will be. And so it isn't it's a function of deciding what what new we're going to build and what we're going to what we're going to continue to keep as as necessary legacy systems, but it's also about making sure we have the processes that really leverage the innovative creativity of our of our people. And we have a proliferation of organizations out there that are doing that right now, DUIX, you have softworks, you have affords, you have naval acts, you have army features command, and I'm sure a variety of others out there that that are that are really doing good and innovative work to try to bring the best capabilities forward that we need for the future, but we've really got to continue. We've got to look at all of that. We've got to make sure there makes sense in terms of the overall approach that we're taking to buying things. It's great to it's great to have innovation, but if you don't have the system that can bring that in bring that into being and make it reality, then I think we will have we will continue to have a problem. We'll continue to rely on legacy systems that cost a lot and won't be won't be the necessary things that we need when the when the next adversary appears on our doorstep. Well, very much General Votale, Secretary Flonoy, we know you're very busy. Thank you very much, both of you for your insights today.